A lot of discussion occurred here about new forum software and merging of old databases and such. I wanted to say more, but thought that thread was not the right place to do it so I wish to continue the conversation here.

Here is my vision: new forum software in which this forum and the old dump are merged and posts and usernames are claimable. The old posts would be available at their old URLs, so that old bookmarks would work, and today's posts would also be available at their today links although they'd redirect to a modern URL for whatever software the forum would use. The old posts would be perma-locked as historical, though ideally it would be using the new software so that you could click the usernames and go to the new forum when relevant. I have absolutely 0 desire to try to merge the old and current data in some reconcilable way without new software. I would rather continue where we are now with phpBB and lose all the old content for the time being.

That's how I feel. If the rest of the community feels differently I will support those choices to the best of my ability with the privileges I have on this forum.

So that this is clear upfront so those who still don't know: jkbbwr is the only one with the ability to deploy software changes right now. He claims "real life has gotten in the way" which I respect in terms of his lack of presence here but certainly not in terms of utter abandonment of us without enabling some replacement. (See: history.) He hasn't given stranac, metulburr, bunburya, myself or anyone else shell access because he wants to maintain control. There's little any of us can do about that.

I think at one point, before the forum crash, someone suggested an exodus because the old admin was neglectful, we only had a single moderator (miss you KDoiron!), and spam was a HUGE issue. The community basically poo-poo'd the point and I was probably one of them. I wouldn't suggest it now either. I wouldn't be surprised though if the forum goes down for days or weeks again in the future, and the IRC channel was a simple way for the regulars to organically move to somewhere that makes more sense.

Because of that prospect, and because of the possibility of beating him to the punch and simply offering a more tenable near-term solution, I am interested in developing alternative software. Just as jkbbwr as expressed, I have a life so this hasn't happened yet. At some point though I'm going to be home alone and feeling productive and I'll start hacking something out (jumping off of my fork here which I thought was from Kebap but the username I forked from isn't the same). My desire would be to use Flask and MongoDB to create a RESTful interface and Dust that would make use of it, because doing so inherently gives us a forum API as older members will remember. (The company I work for uses REST and Dust, though designing our forum this way does not benefit me, I just think it's good design.)

ochichinyezaboombwa recently extracted dumps of the old and this forum's databases. This means that as of now it'd be easier to create and test new forum software. I actually had taken a whack before at the extraction but failed because of my lack of SQL or time investment, and after that I didn't make any more software attempts because I wasn't sure that things could be merged anyway (plus lack of test data, lack of foresight about what the database would look like, etc.). This also means that if it's what the community wants, something other than my vision could be done based on this new development, including a regular phpBB merge (even though I don't want this) which I believe stranac and I have the ability to do, perhaps others as well. It's up to you all.

So yeah. Feel free to discuss, express outrage, express enthusiasm, get started with your own software, ask questions, present alternatives, or whatever!

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Honestly I couldn't care less about the old posts from the original forum. I think this forum is actually (when it is up) doing really well. The fact that no one who is around has any control to change things is a real problem though. Even little things like a forum logo just never happen.

I think half the reason jkbr never does anything for this forum is he hates that it is a phpbb. Sure a custom forum would be better but there is really nothing wrong with this forum. The only issue is that no one has any power to fix or implement improvements.

I think the prospect of an exodus really sucks but I also think that if jkbr isn't willing to even give a second person access there isn't really much choice. It looks bad for all of us when the forum goes down and someone should have the power to implement things. The forum was supposed to be essentially community owned after the buy out. Currently it isn't run that way; it is an autocracy with an absentee autocrat.

I dont really care what forum is up. I dont mind phpbb. The needed essentials are here, if we had access to the server to implement them with. If a new forum software is made in python goes up, i think that would be really neat, but not essential. If the only push to make the new software is to join the old database with the new, then i dont think it is worth it. I would say realistically, to just keep the new posts as the active database. However if someone is so inclined to create a new forum software in python, then i would help when i can. But the desire is not so strong as to start it myself.

I dont think adding a forum software will magically get jkbbwr to update, or contribute in the upgrading of the forum (logo, etc.). He essentially gave us a 1+ year snippet of how the forum is going to be ran. I understand how life can get in the way. I have 2 kids, one of which i have to help with homework, disipline, etc. and the other in diapers. This has pulled me a lot from the forums/programming than i am use to, but i am still here every day. I dont really trust by what people say, but by what they do. And the two sides of the coin for jkbbwr are completely opposite. It essentially feels like another abandonment by the forum admin. It would be one thing if jkbbwr came up with the money himself to buy the fourm, but we all put in to buy the forum "for" the forum users. And the forums users wants upgrades, add ons, enhancements... that are not being done.

I would be quite happy with the phpbb forum with the current database, on a new server that doesnt go down, and one/many trusted users with shell login access to modify the server files.

I also think that the way it was handled when jkbbwr first took ownership of the forum, switching to a buggy forum software instead of the phpbb forum, was a bad call. I think if the software is going to be implmented it should be 100% working or at least useable before switching it to this domain. You couldnt even read peoples posts in that software, because of the html escaping, for example. And when the forum did go completely down for switching things around, etc. there was no message saying go to this IRC, or we are implementing this and that and the forum wil be back at X time, etc., indication to people on the domain as to what was happening. They essentially thought the forum was dead.

I have a lot to say to this thread e.g. about new vs. old software, SQL vs. noSQL database, RESTful or simple urls, and more. But one most principal to me question is: IS THE OLD CONTENT IMPORTANT?

If the community doesn't come to a consensus on this matter that it is, I personally am not interested in any future discussion.

Here is my point of view: the single most important part of a forum like this is human-created content. Point.

The old forum had many users who commented on many thousands(!!!) of topics each; these users were in general very knowledgeable, and this content was extremely useful for many learning Python. It also made a lot towards teaching people to appreciate many aspects of Python such as the beauty of it.

That said: to me, it would be already clear that throwing this away is similar to throw away gold. Don't you agree? But wait, I am not done yet!

Another point is the popularity of the forum, the daily traffic to it, the amount of its active users, etc. And that depends simply on the number of topics, users, etc, that is on the size of the database.Why? because the single primary source of new traffic to a forum like is generated by search engines, and search engines only send users to a site like this iff the site has relevant information: that is the way search engines work.

We know that there is less content and less traffic now.

Want some proof? - here is the number of posts per month for: A) last four years of the old forum:

Slightly another angle: there are about 9000 posts in the current forum and... 164000 in the old one. Guess what is the probability of finding relevant content by a search engine on some random topic in old vs. new database.

Let me stress one more time: adding the old content (and not new software although that would be awesome and beneficial, no questions about it), -- only adding old content back to this forum might give it a real chance to return to its glorious times.

But… It doesn't seem to me that many (or any) share the same point of view. So what do you think? I am going to wait for the community's response. Hello community: are you there?

i didnt mean to knock the old content. There was definately far more content in the old database.

The enhancments,themes, syntax highlighted, etc. are minor, however the forum going down periodically is major. Originally I was under the impression that we would not even be able to implement a new software for the site due to jkbbwr's absence. However since jkbbwr has recently handed off shell access to the server to stranac, made the future more bright for the forum for me. Now i think we can finally "do" something.

There was a ton of top notch contributions by the likes of bill, 7stud, ffao, etc that I would love to be able to browse again. Even if it's static but searchable at p-f.org/old/. I don't care if it's merged into 1 as long as it's accessible, though a merger would be wore elegant. In any case I would like the old content back somehow.

However since jkbbwr has recently handed off shell access to the server to stranac

I can't read that. Care to fill us in?

From the parts that I can read it doesn't seem that a forum software created by micseydel and others will ever be deployed on this domain name. Exodus seems like a good option and there's a number of good domain names to be had. I'd throw some money at that and then jkbbwr can rule his dead forum.

I'm entirely in favor of reincorporating the old content, I just don't want to do it at the expense of the currently working forum. I also don't want a temporary solution where search engines would index anonymous posts that haven't been reclaimed, and then we later do a more long-term solution. Perhaps someone can think of an easier solution that involves phpBB rather than waiting for new software, but every way I imagine it has irresolvable issues. I'd rather wait and do it right.

Because of my perhaps-incorrect idea that we can't do a good merge with current software, I consider the idea of new software and recovering old content to be coupled. I don't think of new software as fixing minor points. I think of it has having more robust spam handling, faster posting of new users' posts, a more potent landing page explaining code tags to users, and other things that would be of more benefit than themes or even syntax highlighting. In the long term we could integrate IRC access or even have a "run code" feature.

metulburr, I get a "You are not authorised to read this forum." message when trying to view that link. It's interesting, I can see that an admin/moderator forum exists in the admin panel, but even after logging into the admin panel I can't see any of the posts. Not sure if that was intentional by someone or if it's this shitty software (more reason to move on). I had seen on the IRC that it looked like stranac was getting shell access. I'd like to know more about that here if possible.

hrs wrote:From the parts that I can read it doesn't seem that a forum software created by micseydel and others will ever be deployed on this domain name.

jkbbwr has said this, but if he's planning on launching 5 months out or longer and if we have something comparable to phpBB significantly sooner I would imagine there would be adequate community outrage to overcome his stubbornness. Or, yeah, exodus.

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micseydel wrote:I get a "You are not authorised to read this forum." message when trying to view that link. It's interesting, I can see that an admin/moderator forum exists in the admin panel, but even after logging into the admin panel I can't see any of the posts. Not sure if that was intentional by someone or if it's this shitty software (more reason to move on)

It is neither intentional, nor is it shitty software.It seems like KevinD(aka. KDoiron) didn't give access to mods...I fixed that now.

micseydel wrote:I'd like to know more about that here if possible.

Not much to say. I got access to the hosting control panel, made a few modifications to get the mod control panel working and that's it so far...

I saw that you'd fixed it, thanks! I thought the software was bad because I couldn't figure out how to fix it even though I have admin privileges. So either it's strangely hard to use (bad software) or KDoiron and I both weren't smart enough to figure it out (even though you were, thanks again!).

What I'm interested in especially is if you would be able to deploy new software. Like if I had a beta Flask forum, would you be able to put it in a subdomain or anything like that. Between ochi's surfacing of the database data and this potential I might get very motivated to put some serious time into getting a V1.0 out.

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I for one would love to see the databases merged, if possible. Another solution could be to create a read-only version of the old database, perfectly browsable and hopefully indexable, which then links forward to a mirror of itself in the new database, where users can then answer and continue the threads, albeit in another thread number, if that seems to be a problem.